Mark Memmott

Doby PhotographyNPR

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.

As the NPR Ethics Handbook states, the Standards & Practices editor is "charged with cultivating an ethical culture throughout our news operation. This means he or she coordinates regular training and discussion on how we apply our principles and monitors our decision-making practices to ensure we're living up to our standards."

Before becoming Standards & Practices editor, Memmott was one of the hosts of NPR's "The Two-Way" news blog, which he helped to launch when he came to NPR in 2009. It focuses on breaking news, analysis, and the most compelling stories being reported by NPR News and other news media.

Prior to joining NPR, Memmott worked for nearly 25 years as a reporter and editor at USA Today. He focused on a range of coverage from politics, foreign affairs, economics, and the media. He reported from places across the United States and the world, including half a dozen trips to Afghanistan in 2002-2003.

During his time at USA Today, Memmott, helped launch and lead three USAToday.com news blogs: "On Deadline," "The Oval" and "On Politics," the site's 2008 presidential campaign blog.

Day Two of General Motors CEO Mary Barra's time testifying before Congress about safety problems with her company's cars has been highlighted by a top senator saying the company "repeatedly lied" about its problems and has fostered a "culture of cover-up."

Tiger Woods' quest to win another of golf's "major" tournaments has been put on hold.

Woods announced on his website Tuesday morning that "he has undergone a successful microdiscectomy for a pinched nerve that has been hurting him for several months. The surgery was performed Monday in Park City, Utah, by neurosurgeon Dr. Charles Rich."

A shot fired by a British Army sniper at a suspected Taliban fighter in Afghanistan last December ended up killing not just the man in the marksman's sights but also five other men who were thought to be militant soldiers, The Telegraph reports.

"The head of the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has raised the possibility that no wreckage from the passenger jet may ever be found, revealing authorities have a very poor understanding about how fast or far it traveled," The Sydney Morning Herald writes.

Pervez Musharraf, the army chief who took over Pakistan in a 1999 coup and ruled as president for another nine years, was indicted Monday by a special court in Islamabad on five counts of high treason.

As The Associated Press says, those are charges that carry the death penalty and are "a sharp blow to the country's powerful military."

"The two Koreas exchanged artillery fire across the western maritime border on Monday after the North staged a live-fire drill that sent artillery shells into southern waters and prompted the evacuation of South Korean islanders," South Korea's Yonhap News writes.

The state of the now 24-day-old search for a missing Malaysia Airlines plane and the 239 people on board can be summed up by these four reports:

-- "Objects sighted at sea on Sunday by an Australian Orion searching for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have been identified as fishing buoys, nets and other ocean junk." (The Sydney Morning Herald)

MLB.com and other news sites are reporting that Detroit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera is getting an eight-year contract extension from the team that means he's guaranteed to earn $292 million over the next 10 years if he keeps playing.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., confirmed Friday that he will not seek re-election in November and is going to host a talk show on the Cumulus radio network starting next year.

Officials expect to release more information later today about the death toll from last weekend's massive mudslide in Oso, Wash., and they're warning that the news is going to be grim.

"We understand there has been confusion over the reported number of fatalities," Snohomish County District 21 Fire Chief Travis Hots said Thursday. "The sadness here is that we know this number will only increase."

On their first day of searching a new area of the Southern Indian Ocean for any sign of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, "five aircraft spotted multiple objects of various colors," the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said Friday.

When emergency personnel got to the scene of Saturday's mudslide near Oso, Wash., they kept people away. Much of a mountain had torn off, roared across the Stillaguamish River, and destroyed about 50 homes and properties.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's "account of these events rings true" and he has "conducted himself at every turn as someone who has nothing to hide," according to an investigation — done at the request of the governor's office — of the George Washington Bridge scandal.

Following up on his acknowledgement in January that it's problematic to have the National Security Agency collecting and storing massive amounts of information about individuals' phone calls, President Obama announced Thursday that he has decided "the data should remain at the telephone companies."

Obama, who has seen his approval numbers decline since he took office in 2009, met for about 50 minutes with the pope, who has become one of the world's most popular leaders since becoming leader of the Roman Catholic Church a year ago.